Week 36 Results.

I can't believe I've actually stuck to this for 36 weeks. To motivate myself, I write a web page every 12 weeks, and make new goals. After my first 12 weeks, I published my results, you can find them by clicking here.

As at the end of week 24, I figured I should show pictures from week 15 and week 36 side by side. (Should have taken a picture in the leotard on week 1! Silly girl.)

The pictures are shown above and to the right. I didn't lose any weight between picture 1 and picture 2. According to my fat measuring scale, I've lost 4 lbs of fat and gained 4 lbs of muscle.

"They" all say you'll be smaller if you have more muscle and less fat. I keep staring at the pics. Maybe my waist looks more defined? My shoulders look broader? Oh, I don't know. One thing I know for sure, I had a tan in July, and I'm really pale right now. I think the tan makes my lets look leaner!

If you want to track both your weight and your fat mass, you can buy scales that measure both body fat and weight at HealthTrack and BigFitness (Warning: BigFitness has excellent products, but I sometimes have trouble getting their site to load.)

I've added details describing my weight loss and exercise level below.

Lucia

Weight Loss Results of Plan 3.

My weight loss is plotted to the left. The pink line was the amount I expected to lose based on the number of calories I burned during exercise and the number of calories I thought I cut from my diet. I expected to lose 1 lb every time I burned 3500 calories more than I consumed. At first, I was eating less than I burned, so you can see the predictive pink line slopes down.

When I reached my fat loss goal, I started eating as much as I wanted. So, I didn't expect to lose anymore weight. If you examine the plot, you'll see that I continued to lose weight. My weight dipped to 124 lbs or so around week 26 of my plan. Didn't actually intend that... Fortunately, I eventually stopped losing weight, and started regaining.

I was lifting weights 3 times a week, and I hoped that I would gain muscle. If you look carefully, you'll see that my weight eventually plateaued around 125 lbs. My fat level is holding fairly constant. I kept 16 lbs of fat off. What does that mean? I think I gained muscle. Yay!!!
You can see the muscle gain more clearly in the graph to the right. My lean muscle mass seems to be near 100 lbs now. I sort of calculated a minimum muscle for myself using the information at my BMI page. I wrote up the healthy weight and body fat percentages there. I think I should try to gain 4 more lbs of muscle. But it's been pretty difficult to do.

Still, there is hope. I am lifting progressively heavier weights. I'm getting a lot stronger. I'm trying to track how strong I am using a few important bench marks. I can now:

Do 15 normal pushups fairly easily.
Do 2 pull ups (but zero chin ups.)
Do 15 lat pull downs at 75 lbs.
Bench press 70 lbs, 15 times.
Leg press 220 lbs, 15 times.

I'm concentrating on being able to do 15 pullups and 15 chin ups by the end of week 4.

By the way, I tracked my progress and created this plot using an EXCEL spread sheet. People who aren't as, ahem, thrifty, as I am may want to consider special purpose software. You can find software at HealthTrack.

Exercise:

My diet and exercise plan had real aerobic exercise goals. These included aerobics, aka cardio, exercise and weight lifting.

During my first program, the aerobics were done on my Nordic track ski machine. Later on, I discovered the Lisle Park District exercise facility. I now alternate using the ski machine, an elliptic machine and a treadmill. All three machines estimate the number of calories I burned doing vigorous aerobic activity each day. I entered those into my spread sheet and made a plot. The plot to the right shows how much I planned to exercise and how much I actually exercised. The pink line shows the number of calories I planned to burn. The pink x's show the number of calories I think I burned.

Between weeks 24-36, I made my cardio goal all but two weeks. What happened those two week? Well, I worked the polls one week, and blew my schedule on the Tuesday and the Wednesday. Then.... can you say Thanksgiving? Yeah. I stayed home on Thursday- Sunday that week. We'll see how Christmas goes! Whey.

I also planned to lift weights 2 or 3 times a week. I managed to do lift weights 3 times every week except weeks 32 and 35. (Yes, I blew it the same weeks I blew my cardio.). I didn't know exactly how to plot that, so you don't get a plot!

By the way, I like to set achievable goals. I knew my schedule and level of fitness would allow me to meet this goal-- as long as I actually did it. I find setting a goal I can meet-- provided I just do it, is more motivating than creating a very ambitious goal that requires me to increase my level of fitness, or carve out precious time I don't have.

More Pics:

More Pictures!

Here are two more sets of week 15 and week 36 photos. I'm still happy with how I look. I have to say though, ... even if I did gain 4 lbs muscle and lose 4 lbs fat, I don't think I look thinner! I think my shouders look wider in the week 36 photos.

I guess I'll take more pics 12 more weeks and see how I look.

What do I plan to do next?

Well, I need to develop my "Fourth 12 Week Plan". Once again, I'd like to put on 2 lbs of muscle in 12 weeks and maintain my over all weight. I think 129 lbs is perfectly healthy, I've noted that as the target weight loss on my weight loss chart. I won't go back to cutting 500 calories a week unless my weight reaches 130 lbs.

Lucia